Good Life Project - Eric Zimmer: Feeding Your Good Wolf

Episode Date: March 14, 2016

Today’s guest, Eric Zimmer, is the host of the wonderful The One You Feed podcast.Growing up in Ohio, his life took a hard turn and began to spin out of control. He eventually found himself addicted to heroin and alcohol, living in a van and struggling to make sense of the world. After years living in an ever-darkening place, though, he was able to tap into a hidden well of strength, get help, get clean and rebuild his life.But, his journey into addiction was not yet over. Believing he could go from clean and sober to casual use, he found himself spiraling back into that place of despair. But this time realized he'd have to make bigger, longer-lasting change, accept certain truths about who he was and create a way to perpetually "feed his good wolf, not his bad one."Along the way, he rebuilt his life, relationships, and career and found solace and fulfillment in, believe it or not, podcasting. He now hosts and produces the hugely popular, The One You Feed podcast, with his childhood friend, Chris Forbes.In this week's conversation, Eric is incredibly transparent and generous in sharing his journey, both the profound struggles and the great awakenings. He also shares how his quest to take back his life eventually led him to podcasting, back to music, to new relationships and a deep and abiding knowledge of the human condition. And he reveals how that, in turn, led him to develop a set of skills that enabled him to not only help himself, but help others move into better places as an advisor and coach. If you've ever struggled to find your way out of darkness, this is a don't miss conversation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24ety the rest of your life, which originally sounds like this awful and daunting thing. But what I found is that the things that I do to maintain my sobriety are the same things that make me happy and serene and peaceful. They're the same thing. So I'm driven to those things kind of under the threat of death in my case.

But sooner or later, I realized like, well, those are the things I want to be doing. So at some point in our lives, we all get knocked down on some level. Today's guest, Eric Zimmer, got hit pretty hard when he got knocked down. It was a bit earlier in his life, and he found himself at one point living in a van addicted to heroin. And it was a huge struggle. And it took years to fight his way back to some level of normalcy and rebuild his life and his career and family. And he was doing pretty well. And then he took another hit. But this time, he approached it differently and really took the time to start to reexamine his life and

build the practices and people and strategies and ideas into it that would illuminate the path forward for hopefully his remaining days, which he's still a young guy, are going to be a lot. In today's conversation, we talk about this journey. He's incredibly transparent and real and generous. He's also the co-founder and host of a really tremendous podcast called The One You Feed that I'm a regular listen to. And I have been a past guest on the show and I really enjoy. So you guys should definitely check that out as well. And I think you're going to really enjoy and learn from his lens on how to move through some of the more challenging times in life and do it in sort of an adult way that honors the responsibilities

that you also may have built around you as you moved into life as well. Really excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. And now with Eric Zimmer in Good Life Project headquarters in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where you've come in from the wild, wild, wild Ohio. That's right, the wilds of Columbus, Ohio, which is not so wild anymore as far as it's a lot like a lot of places. Yeah. It's a city at this point. It's grown an awful lot since in my lifetime. What's the city known for? Is there like a thing? No, Columbus doesn't have a thing, which is partly what's interesting about it and makes it, I think, a good city in a lot of ways.

It's largely recession proof. Like a lot of Ohio just got crushed, you know, as you went through the 70s and the 80s. But Columbus has a very wide variety of industries. There's no one thing. There's the huge university. There's a lot of health care. There's a lot of insurance. Lots of Fortune 500 companies there. So it just tends to sort of soldier along throughout whatever the economic conditions are it's it's got a good food scene there's lots of good music we don't have a great independent bookstore i'd say that's the big like when i go to a city that's like what i'm looking for right it's a great independent bookstore and there just isn't there isn't anything that that can compare with you know

some of the major you know well-known independent book, like one's here, Asheville's got some. I mean, it's just, that's the one thing I would say is missing, but it doesn't seem like a good business to start particularly right now. You know, it's really interesting, because I'm actually really fascinated by that, because five years ago, the word on the street around publishing was, you know, basically everybody's going away, brick and mortar. And then we saw some of the big boxes, you know, borders gone.

Right. You know, we see Barnes and Noble increasingly giving more floor space to things that are not books. Right. And then everyone's like the indies are going to be the first ones to just completely vanish because they can't compete, you know? Yep. But what I've seen, at least in the data or like the sort of like the inside the pundits that I've seen sort of sharing, what's really happening is that the really well curated indies are doing really well yep yep i would think so i mean if you it's it makes sense with what we hear you know certainly online there's a lot about you know find your market and serve it really well and some of those bookstores serve it incredibly well

yeah i mean they really do the author events there's just, I mean, there's a lot more to it than just selling books, but they seem to do very well. Yeah. There's also, there's just something about walking into a bookstore like that. I know. It's just like, you almost see the handwriting on it, but you really hope they don't go anywhere because it's like a magical place. Yep, yep. There's no doubt.

I mean, and libraries, too. I feel the same way about libraries. Well, interesting future. And even books themselves. I don't know about you, but I have my electronic devices when I travel. It's nice to be able to stack books up on them. But give me a chance to just sit on an old chair on a summer day, and I want the feel of an actual book in my hand, like the smell of the pages. I'm the same way.

I think I use the, I've got a Kindle reader that I like, and it's great when I'm particularly, like if I'm preparing for an interview to be able to highlight passages, but yeah, if I'm going to read something for pleasure, I'll usually, if I can, I'll get the book. Yeah, no, totally agree. We're both in lovely situations

in that we have conversations with people for a living very often right author so i'm sure you know you as well i get opportunities to have books sent to me yeah i don't figure but they're always asking you like can we give you the digital copy or i'm like i'll take the paper copy if you have it available like i'd rather have that but yeah you mentioned the music scene in Columbus. And I know that's kind of like a. It was a big part of what I did. I haven't been in a band in several years, but the great part of the show is that Chris and I compose all the music for it. So there's an intro and an outro, and then we do two music breaks every episode. And so we get to write those, which is really, really enjoyable. It's great to be able to bring music into it

and have it actually go somewhere. Not that it's, you know, like we're releasing records, but it's just fun to have an outlet for it and to make it part of it makes it feel like it's more of all of me, I guess. Yeah, I mean, and which is, I think, just such an important thing, because like you were alluding to the further we get into life, we tend to like kind of discount those fringe parts of us that we seem like that we you know we feel like well we can't really validate because it's not contributing to our you know ability to pay the rent or do whatever it is but they're such an essential part of us and i think it takes away so much more than we realize it takes away yeah i agree and i think for me it was finding like with music a good number of years ago i I finally had to really let it go into being a place of a thing that I And I realized that I'd start writing something or playing and then my mindset would be like, okay, this is an idea. I've got to make this thing pleasure of it, the joy of creating, of getting better, of just doing something that is really important to me and realizing that it can be really important to me, even if it's something I don't spend a ton of time on. Yeah, I love that. And it actually touches

on something I wanted to talk with you about anyway, which I think is really interesting. And it's the notion of trying to take one of the things that really sparks you and forcing it to be the thing that also puts food on the table and pays your mortgage and stuff like that. And it's funny, if you had asked me five years ago, like, should everybody try and do that? I probably would have said yes. I don't know whether it's just having met so many people that are doing it differently or being a little bit older but i'm so much more open to the idea the notion now that actually you know it's not actually an entirely bad potential path for anybody to have just a solid mainstream gig and then to have you know like potentially something

that you do you know that allows you the freedom and the bandwidth and time to do this on the side and not like you were just saying, not have to worry about whether what you're doing with it is going to, at some point, justify the means by contributing to your income. You know, I think it gives you so much more freedom to just do it because you love doing it. Yeah. And I think that's, you know, I, when I look at the online space, there's so much of the,

you know, chase your passion, follow your dream, quit your job, do your thing. And, and a lot of the people that are, are a lot of the advocates of that tend to be younger people, which is far easier to do when you're 22 years old, when you're, you know, in your mid forties and you've got, you know, two kids in a house and a mortgage in college. To me, the thought of doing that feels irresponsible. It doesn't, you know, it's, and so I think what you said is important. It's like, how do I find, how can I find a balance that, that works? Having a job that sucks the life out of you is certainly not the answer in any, or I agree with you on that, that gig, you know, the thing that makes

bulk your money. And that's kind of the situation I'm in. I mean, the podcast makes some money. The bulk of my earnings come from e-commerce consulting work. And it's not my passion in the same way that the podcast is. I don't love it in the same way. But the work is challenging. I get paid well. It's flexible. I love the people I work with. My brain is very engaged. I'm solving problems. I mean, as far as like a job goes, it's great. I mean, it's a really great job. And I think had I, with the show, had I been forced to figure out how to make it pay the bills, or I've got six months till this podcast can feed the family. I would have started making decisions about the podcast that would not have been in the best interest of making the best show I could make, I would have made decisions that would have been really geared to getting more money on the, you know, get more money into it, if I had a limited runway of time. And so by not having had to do that, I feel like I've been able to really do what I feel like keep a higher degree of integrity about what I'm doing. You know, I get approached by sponsors sometimes. And some of them I just say no, it's not a not a good fit. Cause I'm in a position to be able to do that.

If this was how I was going to make the next mortgage payment, I probably would have, you know, sponsors on talking about how you can lose 50 pounds in two weeks with this new super shred pill or whatever. Right. I've been able to say no to that because of the approach I've taken. And I think it's, uh, the Buddha talks about a lot, you know, the middle ways, I think sometimes one of the most profound teachings there. And, and so for me, that's kind of a middle way. It's like, I'm honoring responsibilities to my family, I'm doing things that I committed to doing and saying that I was going to do. And I think, you know, you talk about, we both talk a lot about a good life. I think that that's part of the good life that we don't talk about a lot is the responsibilities we sometimes have to others. The honoring of those, I think, does create a good life, even though it doesn't always maybe feel as good as some of and something to do that i love doing and helps

people and and so it's it's a good situation now and i can then make the transition you know over a longer period of time with a just less panic and less fear yeah no doubt i mean it's interesting too i want to circle back to a couple things especially your exploration of buddhism because i know it's something that you're that dances through your mind a lot, but the, just the notion that you're just sharing about honoring the role, it's like Viktor Frankl's work, honoring the role of, of work and even a certain level of suffering as a source of meaning, which, you know, leads to a good life, um, rather than sort of like the more common definition of, you know, like, it's all that happiness.

You know, I think when you can really frame what you're doing as, look, I made a certain commitment, you know, and it's important, like, it's part of my value system that I actually honor that. And if it means that I'm not doing, there's a certain amount of sacrifice that goes along with it, but because it's in the name of something that I actually feel strongly about, I can experience that as a source of meaning rather than just a source of gutting myself, that there's value to that, that I think we don't give enough to. Yeah. And I think the really important part of that is to become conscious of that. When we get into, I have to, I can't go do the podcast full time because I have to take care of the kids.

Well, no, actually, I don't have to take care of the kids, really. I mean, I don't have to do any of those things. So when I switch out of that mindset into I'm choosing to do it this way, because I value these things, then I'm not in a stuck or victim or feeling bad for myself role, I'm realizing that, okay, every action has a consequence. And if I were to take the route that, that, you know, only did what was important to me, I don't think I would, I think I'd end up being far less happy, even though I was chasing happiness, because there would be this underlying sense of not having done the things that mean a lot to us. But our culture really pushes very hard the, you know, do what makes you happy, follow your passion.

And again, I'm not suggesting people should stay in situations that are miserable, but I think it's a grayer area than we sometimes make it. Yeah, I completely agree. And like you were framing it also, I think the further you move into life, the more you start to say, like there are certain responsibilities that are actually really important to me. The more you just make different decisions,

you know, and the more I know my, it's funny, I actually just turned 50 and I didn't, no birthday really made me reflect, but this did. Yeah. And I wasn't expecting it. I'm headed that direction. And I'm sort of feeling that way in advance of it. Like, that one feels different somehow than the other

ones. Like the other ones, I kind of just let slide by. Yeah. And it took me by surprise. And I'm finding myself a lot more, this word significance keeps coming into my thought process where it wasn't, I thought it just wasn't a really huge thing for me. And, but I'm really thinking, I'm like, you know what, you know,

is what I'm doing really significant and how do I even define that? Right. And you know, should I even care? And I do care, you know, and I, and I do feel like there's a certain honoring of like really when I make a choice to put my energy into something, like is it contributing in some way to, is it a significant action?

You know, or am I just dawdling? Yep. Yep. And I think with kids that gets particularly interesting because a lot of what we do with kids doesn't feel significant in the moment of what you're doing. Take me into that more. Well, like driving a kid to somewhere he wants to be. That particular action doesn't feel significant, not in the same way that talking to someone who listens to your show,

who's really upset and sends you an email and you write something back. It doesn't, they feel different in some way. But when I look at like the child growing up and the importance of that, it's like all of these little insignificant actions taken individually, but add up into a really big significance, which is feeling like to the best of our ability, to the best of my ability, I raised my son in a way that felt good. You know, I feel like I did the best I could by him. That is very, very significant. But it's very easy to miss that because the individual moments don't seem as significant as a lot of moments that can be more dramatic that we're presented with.

And sometimes having to just say, like, I think anybody who's got a career in kids wrestles with this. Like, I think you kids got a football game that night, you've been to a bunch of football games, there's something important happening at work, it seems very significant, it seems very dramatic. And those decisions are always challenging to make. But I think it's that having the asking yourself what's more significant in the broader terms versus maybe just what it gets back to that Stephen Covey thing of urgent versus important. Yeah, no doubt. to the question I wanted to ask her, what it meant to her to live a good life, was it's about honoring all the tiny little moments that we steamroll past in the name of trying to get to the big moment. But what I really think, when you really zoom the lens out, fundamentally

it goes back to what you kind of started the conversation with, which is awareness. Right. I think that's been such a big focus of everything I've been thinking about lately. I mean, I think the good life question to me, I think awareness is right at the heart of it. Because without it, who even knows? I think that's the biggest battle I feel like I fight is just going on to autopilot and just doing what comes up next, because life has plenty of nexts to throw at me all the time. And if I'm not very aware of things, it's so easy to go into that autopilot, whether it be the actions I take, or, you know, for myself, a lot of times, just the way I think, my thought patterns, my, the way I view the world, all that goes into this sort of autopilot. And I'm not being conscious about not choosing my view of the world in any sort of conscious way. Now, which for me, I mean, I have a, I've wrestled with depression, on and off for years. And so I

think, left to my own devices, my mind doesn't go to a particularly sunny place. It just sort of, I think, you know, who knows, is it the way I think, or is it emotions? Is it a shortage of neurochemicals? I mean, there's a thousand explanations, but if I'm not consciously sort of framing and working with that, it's very easy for me to get into sort of a, you know, my inner Eeyore kind of wakes up and, you know, and so that's, you know, for me to be aware that that's happening is so important, because then I can work with it. But it's so easy to not even be aware of it or be aware that there's a choice in what's happening internally. Yeah. Do you feel like you're you've become or the process of becoming aware of your sort of just state of mind state of being has has increased over a window of time i think greatly yeah i mean i think it's definitely and continues to increase as from a combination of things i mean i honestly started this show to a large degree because i wanted to be consistently reminded of these kind

of truths and i thought well if i talk to somebody every week about it and i read their book about it you know between episodes like this stuff's going to stay in the front of my mind. And it really worked. I mean, it's like they, a lot of things we talk about with habit design, right? It's like, put things in your way, you know, make it. So I've tried, I've tried to engineer my life in such a way that the, that I'm reminded of those things regularly, uh, because I think that I don't remember it. My normal state is not to remember it really well. I think I've gotten a lot better by designing my life by getting older. So it's definitely gotten better. But it's, it's still not, you know, I guess nobody's nothing's

ever perfect. But it's still there that tendency to sort of just get into, I'm very busy with what's happening. And I'm thinking about all the things that have to get done in the day and all that different stuff. And I'm not really realizing that, you know, what's the lens I'm looking through? Yeah. So what are some of the, you mentioned sort of designing your life, and you mentioned putting things in your way. And it's funny, because I think a lot of people hear the phrase you know put something in your way that strikes them as a negative thing actually like it's a roadblock but you you meant it differently and i want to make sure that we yeah i mean an example would be like if you want to um play guitar more right put your guitar somewhere you're always going to be right right it's so it's amazing to me how the difference

between a guitar hanging on a hook by your couch versus a guitar sitting in a case at the foot of the couch. How much more often do I get played? I mean, it's a totally different experience as somebody who's done both. Right. And it almost makes me like, what? We are such, sometimes such... We're dogs. Yeah. We're five-loss dogs. Exactly. We're really not that much more evolved.

It takes 20 extra seconds, literally. And yet, that's the difference between doing it and not doing it. So designing my life is things like doing the show was an example. Um, it's for, for keeping myself in a positive mind space. It's doing the show. But before I did the show, I would do things like make sure I'm having conversations with people who that's the way they think about the world. You know, making sure intentionally to schedule those sort of things, being intentional about doing reading at certain time. Or if I'm not intentional about trying to put positive things into my brain, then my brain tends to go to more negative places. I'd like to think that I hear these things once and I remember them, but more and more, I've just become very convinced that emotional and mental health is exactly like physical health. It's, you don't eat, you know, carrots one day and expect to be healthy for the next week, right? You eat carrots every day, or you, you don't go to the gym once and expect it to last for two weeks. Depends what advertisement you're reading.

Exactly. Exactly. So I've just become, I've gotten more and more used to that fact. Like there's no, the point's not going to come where I'm going to learn something the right way or hear it in the right way or find the right teacher or anything where this stuff's going to click and stay clicked. Like I'm a human being. They were all human beings. And it means that we're always it's kind of the parable of the show, right? The good wolf versus the bad wolf. always going on in every human this this sort of wrestling with being aware or unaware or conscious or you know unconscious or being intentional about what you do or choosing to see the good

things in life versus the bad things in life and i think i for a long time just thought if i found the right thing that would click in it would stay there and my experience is it's that's not going to happen it is a consistent effort and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just the truth. But to try and think it's going to go away and not be that way, I think is, I'm a lot more productive when I just accept, all right, I need to put those things in my life and they're going to stay in my life. Those are routines that stay a part of my life. Yeah. I mean, I think that's such a huge awakening. It was like when I actually kind of step back and like wait a minute there is no there there you know there is it's not a location it's a lens yeah you know

and it's like you can put on the glasses right now that doesn't mean everything gets beautiful right now but that means you just choose to say okay you're like i'm not i'm not trying to get to that place i'm just like i'm gonna wake up and do the work today and tomorrow and the next day and the next day. And over time, I'm just going to experience the world differently. And there's no final place where you're like, oh, hell, I'm at the good life place. Or I'm at the happy place. I'm good. Like, I can stop everything.

Right, right. Which is exactly, I think, the way that a lot of us view the world. And so we keep searching because that's what we're expecting. Right. You know, it's, and that's, I think, why we, you know, the next superfood that comes along, everybody's going to try. Because the previous superfood was supposed to fix it and it didn't. Right. You know, or the previous type of yoga, you know, was supposed to do it and it didn't.

Or transcendental meditation was supposed to be the final thing and it wasn't. And it's, and so I think, I mean, I often think, and I don't know if you wrestle with this, I wrestle with this a little bit with the show in that every week I'm throwing sort of new information and content out there. And the reality is, I think for the vast majority of us, we don't need more new stuff. We need reminding of basic principles. So for me, I try and frame the show in that way. And I think that's exactly what you do while you've got a theme like the good life project that brings everything back to that lens. And I try and do the same thing with my own themes. But more and more, I realize it's

for the vast majority of us, we don't need to learn something we don't know. We just need to do the things we know to do more consistently and regularly. I completely agree. As a recent, um, I recently heard Derek Silver say, um, what was his line?

It was great. He's like, if information was the answer, we'd all be billionaires with six pack abs. It's like such an awesome line. Um, but it's, it's entirely true. And so it's interesting that you

say that because sometimes i kick back and i'm like what am i actually doing with this you know like i'm sitting across from you like a bright guy who goes deep into these questions and and like you we both have the opportunity to just have some amazing conversations but what am i really doing with it because i think adding different voices that can just frame things and tell stories in a way where somebody can transfer into that story for the first time, realize that the thing that they've heard a thousand times before, actually, oh, this is how it actually works for me. And it's real. That's right. Yeah.

And I think part of what I'm realizing we're creating also is a body of proof. You know, my sense is, and I'm curious what you think about this. My sense is that one of the biggest challenges to consistent doing the work, which we know is really just the answer for all of this. It's deep down. I think there's a voice in people where we're like, they're like, I'm not necessarily sure. I believe that if I do the work, it's really going to make a difference. So I almost feel like what, what both of us are doing to a certain extent is we're putting up case studies from all walks of life, not some teachers, but also case studies that kind of showed like almost no matter where you came from, there are some of these ideas can

make a real lasting difference if you do the work day in, day out. Yeah, that's a great way to think of it. I hadn't actually thought of it that way before. I think that makes a lot of sense. I had a conversation with somebody last week that sort of spoke to this a little bit. And so I'm a recovering alcoholic and addict, and this person works in a particular church, a particular religion, and they have decided they want to start a 12-step group for people of their faith. And it was interesting because what I ultimately landed with is my biggest piece of advice was just make sure there's lots of other sober people around. Because that's the biggest piece of that is that you sit there and you feel hopeless, but you sit in a room with a lot of other people who say, I was just like you. And they tell the kind of stories you heard. And you look at them and you can just see like, wow, that person is actually in a much better place. They're

content and happy. And that is, to your point, it's a case study that says, Oh, if I do these things, you know, that could be me too. And so I think that's such a critical part of whatever journey we're on is to is to be able to see people where we want to be yeah and you know the really interesting thing every time i think about that from like a role model perspective or whatever i think of something that carol dweck said on her show you know the fixed and the growth mindset and the thing that she said on there that really blew me away was that people with a fixed mindset can't have role models or mentors. They see those people as a threat because they think they're fixed where they are. So instead of when

I started this show, instead of seeing you and what you were doing and saying like, wow, that is an amazingly good show. I think I can make a really great show. If I was more in the fixed mindset and I couldn't make a show that good, I wouldn't have been able to look at you as somebody to, to, you know, as a guide along the way, I would have looked at you as a threat. And so that really struck me about the way we, that when we change our mindset about fixed or growth with things, then we can see people further along the path for what they are, which is people further along the path that we can follow, not people to be envious or jealous of. Yeah, I love that. For people who aren't familiar with Carol Dweck's work, can you share a little bit about just the distinction between fixed and growth mindset? Yeah, she has

this idea that we all have either a fixed or a growth mindset, not necessarily like I have a fixed mindset and Jonathan has a growth mindset in all ways. It depends, you know, like I have a fixed mindset in certain areas and I might have a growth mindset in other areas. But the basic difference is that a growth mindset just says, hey, I can get better at whatever this thing is. I can become more of whatever I want to be. And the fixed mindset just sort of says, I am what I am. I'm as good at that as I'm going to be. And doesn't really try and feels very stuck. And

I think that that's such a, I do a lot of work with people around habits. And the thing I hear from people so often is I'm the kind of person who always quits what they start. I'm the kind of person who's lazy and doesn't like to work out. I'm the kind of, and that's the fixed mindset. And the growth mindset isn't like, oh, well, I mean, it's not, it's not silly. Like, oh, if I have a growth mindset, I'm going to play basketball like Michael Jordan. That's not going to happen. But if I wanted to take a growth set around basketball, like a growth mindset around basketball, I would say, I don't really know how good I could get,'s, that's the main difference. And I just find that it's a, it's one of those very simple, but very fundamental things to stop and say, well, how am I looking at this situation? How am I looking at that? And which of those am I in? And it can make such a big difference day to day and really little things. Yeah, no, I love that. And I'm such a huge fan of her work also. And fantastic conversation with her on your show, by by the way you guys should

definitely check out that particular episode is really wonderful conversation you mentioned a couple times now that at various points in your life you have i don't know if we're the word struggle is the right word it'd probably be a good with depression um with addiction with alcohol are you open to sharing a bit more about that sure Sure. Yeah. So how early in your life did you become aware of the fact that these were part of what was going on? I mean, as I look back on myself as a kid and as an adolescent, I can see that a lot of this stuff was already there. I was a troubled child. I mean, I was a kleptomaniac by the age of 10, like really hardcore. I don't know why. I mean, there aren't good answers as to why. I mean, people will say, well, why are you an addict or an alcoholic? We could speculate on that. And it's

an interesting speculation, but I don't think there's any real answer. Thank God that you don't need to know that answer in order to fix it. So I think early on, I recognize, I mean, looking back, I can see I was troubled. I was not a happy kid for whatever reason. It just wasn't there. So I started to, I drank a little bit in high school. And I, again, look back, I can see like I drank very abnormally. I didn't do it very often, but I would do things like I would drink and I would wake up the next morning and there'd be a bottle still there and I would just pour it in my orange juice and drink it again right away. It's not like I went on long binges. I did it very once in a while. I drank mouthwash a lot.

I mean, like I can see looking back, like I was not drinking like the other kids my age. Were you aware of that at the time? No, no idea. And then I actually stumbled into, I created a nonprofit program to tutor inner city kids when I was in high school. So the idea was take suburban high schoolers to tutor inner city elementary kids. And once I started doing that, I saw the wreckage of drugs and alcohol in those kids' lives, their parents. I was like, I'm not doing any of that stuff. And I kind of swore it off. Several years later, I was in a lot of emotional pain. And somebody said, take a drink, you want this? And I just for whatever reason said, sure. And it was kind of like I was off to the races from then it was like,

like a switch flipped. And I just suddenly was like, this is the greatest thing ever. This is the answer to everything. I still claim that two drinks is the best antidepressant I know of. I mean mean i've never found anything nearly as effective obviously it has a lot of side effects so i you know i spent the next six years probably rarely being sober doing that same sort of drink wake up start drinking again or smoke pot first thing in the morning or just, I was rarely drawing a breath that wasn't, you know, altered by some substance. What else was going on in your life at that, during that sort of six year window? A lot of kind of nothing. Um, I didn't go to college.

I made a play at being a musician, but I mean, drugs and alcohol were the most important thing. So it reached a point where it was really like it was affecting your ability to really do anything else. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting because I, you know, I didn't go to college. I didn't have a car. And none of that stuff really mattered much to me. I think I, you know, as it went on, I started realizing like this isn't good.

And I moved to California to try and sober up. I don't know why I thought moving to San Francisco would sober me up. It didn't. I just became more, I just started coming to in places where I didn't know where I was instead of coming to, like going, oh, I know where I'm at. So I started to know there was a problem, but it wasn't really until I remember an incident.

I had an opportunity to apprentice with this guy who was a classical guitar teacher. And he was like, you know what, if we work together for six or nine months, you could start getting gigs going out doing it. Like I saw this, this real path towards something I thought I really wanted. And when I was unable to stop getting high for that, I think was the first real dawning for me of like, Oh, this is problems, because the other things were things that people wanted for me, you know, you should want to go to college. And so did I want to go kind of,

cause it was pressure, but it wasn't in my heart that was in my heart and I, I couldn't do it. It took me many years to get sober after that happened. I mean, I eventually ended up a heroin addict. I was living in the back of a van. Um, you know, I didn't have anywhere to live. I, I weighed 50 pounds less than I weigh now. I mean, if you can just, I mean, I'm not very big to start right. Like, I mean, I was dying. I had hepatitis C. I mean, I was dying. I had 25 years of jail time because the felonies hanging over my head at the age of 24. And so that's kind of where it took me and um i found my way into rehab and just became willing at each step along the way to very grudgingly say okay to the next thing they suggested i do until at one point i finally went to sort of like we were talking about before or i finally went

oh wait a minute this could be different because i think i lived under the idea of an at once an addict always an addict like i didn't think i was going to get better. I didn't think there was a way to get better. And that's a pretty dark place. So yeah, I, I, I got into recovery really at the end of my, you know, starting in my 25th year and really threw myself into AA. And, um, that's how I got sober was, was 12-step programs. Really threw myself into that and pretty much completely turned my life around. It's such a huge shift. Was the process of moving from this is just the way I am,

this is going to be my life and it's not actually possible to live differently to moving to a place of possibility, was it a gradual process? Or was there a moment in time or something that happened that kind of? I think it was it was gradual and halting, there'd be a few minutes of hope. I mean, and I think that that's what, you know, 12 step program saved my life twice, actually, because we could go into a later story. There's a lot about 12 step work, 12 step stuff that I don't love things there that

I don't, I don't think are ideal. I wish it, I wish there was some reform to be done. Um, I don't think it works for the reason that a lot of people think it works, but one of the reasons I think it works so much is exactly what we talked about earlier is I would get, you know, what they did is they just kept taking me to meetings, kept taking me to meetings. And I just kept seeing people, you know, who, you know, based on what they're saying, you're like, that's, I hear my insides being spoken up there and that person is better. And so some nights maybe you're like, ah, it's never going to work for me. But other nights you're like, I think it might. And so it was just this gradual, you know, keep doing it

until all of a sudden you've got a week or two weeks or a month or two months and you start suddenly going, Oh, wait a minute. It's not even a question of, could it work for me? It's a question of, it is working for me. And then it's just a matter of continue, you know, continuing to just do that thing. What, you know, what is that thing you and I were talking about earlier? I think I, I come to the idea that if I want to maintain a certain level of serenity and health that there are things i have to continue to do i think that comes a little more naturally to me after being in 12-step programs for so long because that's kind of uh an assumption or uh

a thing that we're often told you're going to need to do this you're going to need to maintain your sobriety the rest of your life yeah which originally sounds like this awful and daunting thing but what i found is that the things that i do to maintain my sobriety are the same things that make me happy and serene and peaceful they're the same thing so i'm driven to those things kind of under the threat of death in my case but sooner or later i realized like well those are the things I want to be doing. Yeah, I mean, and they also tend to be the things that are really effective at helping you move through depression, which, you know, you said, well, through this whole thing,

where, and, you know, depression has that same, from what I, you know, I've seen from the outside looking in that scene, and I could never really fathom or understand the depth of futility that goes along with it, of disbelief that there will ever be a day that's different from today until I saw it unfold in the lives of people close to me. And it's the same thing you're kind of talking about with being deep into addiction. And when you layer those things on top of each other yeah it's got to be brutal but also there's like the flip side what you're saying now it's almost like the same things that you do to open the window of possibility from moving from addicted to you know like to being okay in the world and also from being moving from i can't believe that there will ever be a day that's different from today to maybe, just maybe.

You know, it's the same stuff. And it's really good for you, too. Oh, it is really good for me. And I don't do nearly as much 12-step stuff anymore. But because my understanding of, you know, 12-step work, and I think most people, if you talk to you, they would say that the goal the, the goal of, of 12 step works is to, you know, most people would say to connect you to God, you know, connect you to your higher power. I would just say to connect you, you know, there's a line in AA that says something about, you know, it's as long as we're in fit spiritual condition, we can remain or remain sober. And so what does that fit spiritual condition mean? It's a,

that's a spiritual, such a vague word anyway but what i've kind of realized is that i can stay in fit spiritual condition a lot of different ways and as long as i'm staying there drinking is not a problem whether i go to meetings or i don't go to meetings um now i stopped going to meetings at one point in the past and and got drunk again um so but i was not i i lost sight of the spiritual connection piece at all. I became more and more just obsessed with me. And that's the surest way for me to get sick is to just think about myself all day long. And, you know, I will get worse and worse in whatever category you want to describe.

Was there something that triggered that? To drink again? Yeah. Yeah, it was a combination of things. I was about eight years sober. And about a little while before that, my son's mother and I were married. And she came home one day and said, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm in love with someone else.

And I kind of fell apart. I didn't pick up a drink. What happened, though, is I had gone into AA and I had sort of, you know, under the threat of death again, right? when the shit hit the fan for me I realized I did not have a spiritual life that worked I had sort of like a baby's idea of spirituality and so then I realized I had nothing to lean on so I stayed sober through the worst of that divorce. But what happened was that I didn't have a spiritual connection. I started to get more and more interested in me. You know, I started sleeping around more. I mean, I started smoking in my mid 30s. I had been a heroin addict and had never smoked. And all of a sudden, now I'm sober, like eight years smoking cigarettes. It's like, I look back, I'm like, well, that was pretty clear. The writing was on the wall.

I just drifted further and further away. And all of a sudden I hit a point where the thoughts started coming to me that maybe I'm not an addict or an alcoholic because I was 22 years old, right? I'm in my, I'm in my mid thirties now. And I go, well, I was just a kid. And I was doing heroin. I mean, obviously, that's a terrible idea. I'm not saying I'm going to go do that again. No one should do that. But a couple of drinks. And oh, boy, I've been to a lot of therapy. And I make good decisions in my life, right? Maybe it was just a phase. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I go to work. I take good care of my son. I'm making good decisions on a day-to-day basis. Maybe I just didn't know how to make good decisions then. And then I think the final straw was my brother had been in recovery for a long time. And I found out that he had been out drinking for about a year and his report was, I'm fine. And so I went, oh, well, it's not genetic either. So I thought I'll try it again. And it worked just fine for a little while.

You know, I had a drink and the world didn't end and I didn't end up out on the street corner shooting heroin. And but I found my way back. So it tells you the story didn't didn't end too well. But that's what led me back to it was I think I really thought that for me, that alcohol was just like alcohol and drugs were just like everything else. I just needed to make good decisions. And I don't know why it's not that way with me.

I don't know why that thing is different for me. But it is because I cannot that just alcohol and drugs become the most important thing to me. I could say my son was more important, but I didn't act like it. If I was honest about what was happening inside of me, nothing was more important. And so I eventually did get sober again, thankfully, before anything really bad happened. Almost nothing bad happened. I was lucky enough to be able to sort of step off without having to ride it to the bottom. It was a lot harder than the first time because the first time I got sober, I mean, I had pretty much been handed my ass. I mean, I was

really in trouble. And this time I had just gotten the best job I ever had. I mean, from the outside, everything looked really good. So it was a lot more of an intellectual exercise. I had to keep telling myself, well, if I do this at the then, and I think for all of us, if our consequences are down the road, it's so much harder to do. Yeah, it's just the way their brains are wired. Exactly. So it was a lot harder, but I just kept saying to myself, do I really have to do this? Do I really have to get like in a car accident with my son because I'm drinking in order to stop this?

Do I really have to play this out? out or can i just be because i knew in my heart that i was every bit the addict or alcoholic i was at that point then when i was shooting heroin and living in a van there was no difference in my internal state my outside was different but the inside was the same which was that this is the most important thing getting high is the most important thing and so i was a you know i've been sober i think almost nine years back I've been back about nine years. So, yeah, that's that journey. You talked about 12-step being sort of, or at least some of the principles of philosophy is the structure, the frame of that being important in both your recovery and sort of your day-to-day. Certainly a little bit back further also, we touched a little bit on your exploration

of Buddhism. But from what I know, it's also it's something that you kind of geek out on to a certain extent, as do I. And I'm curious how much you look to Eastern philosophy to guide your decisions and behaviors and daily practices that you feel really add to your ability to not just sustain yourself, but also flourish? Probably a fair amount. I would say that it's, I've been looking at that stuff long enough now, same thing with 12 steps. I've looked at that stuff long enough. I feel like it's, I can't even tell sometimes like how much of it is the influence because it's just the way my brain sort of sees the world now. But I think Eastern philosophy, you know, particularly Buddhism, has had a huge influence on the way I see the world. I wouldn't describe myself as a Buddhist, necessarily.

But I think that the diagnosis of the human condition that the Buddha gave is a pretty accurate one. I don't, depending on how people interpret or translate, I don't agree with it all the way, but I think there's a ton of wisdom in there. I get so much, you know, there's so many different things that the Buddha taught that were so wise that I think it, more than anything else I've seen, describes, I think, what it is to be a human. Yeah, I agree with that, and I relate to it so much.

One of the fundamental, and again, I'm wondering if this is what you're talking about in terms of how it's translated. One of the fundamental things that I've talked to a lot of people about and struggled with is some variation of a teaching that life is innately suffering. And I've tried to get comfortable with that or really trying to understand what that means. I'm curious whether you've explored that. Yeah, I have. And actually, that's not one I have trouble with. Because I think that if I just look at, see, I found that I don't know if I took it is that, you know, all of life is always suffering.

The way I read that is, there's going to be suffering in life, you know, there's going to be pain in life. And I think that that at least in some of the the more contemporary buddhist teachers pain and suffering are sort of split apart from each other right and so the idea that there is pain in life i frankly the first time i read it i was like finally somebody's telling the truth yeah like whoa okay i can get behind this because we all we all have pain we're gonna die that's not That's not going to be, it's not lovely. People we know are going to die. That's not going to feel good.

You know, I'm going to get a headache later. You know, sooner in my life, I'm going to have another one that's going to be painful. So I found that was very, I find that to be one of the most refreshing things about Buddhism because. It's not sugarcoating. It's not sugarcoating. And all of a sudden, it's not sugarcoating. It's not sugarcoating. And all of a sudden it's not me either. I don't have to think that I'm failing because there's pain in my life. It's just the human condition.

It happens to all of us. And we do not have a good relationship with that in the West. It is not. We think we should always be healthy, active, happy. And I don't think that comes with being human. Those things happen, but they're not the only thing that happen. And so that fundamental idea that there is pain and that we all have some of it, for me, is a very comforting thing. Because I go, oh, this is perfectly normal.

It's interesting because there's a really nuanced distinction that makes a profound difference in the way it, I completely agree with the idea that there is pain. Life is pain, is when it veers into certain metaphysical things that just don't make sense to me. So all of a sudden, like, I'm good with Buddhism up till we start talking about rebirth. And I'm not saying that there isn't rebirth. I don't have any idea. But the idea that my goal should be to get to a point where I never get born again, it's just, it's, it's, it doesn't work for me. It's much easier for me to stop short of that because inherent in that, if that's the goal, then is inherent that being born is a bad thing and life is pain, you know? And so that's not, I don't, I kind of, I kind of stopped there and depending on who you talk to, people will say, well, that's not really what the Buddha taught. It was just the culture he was in.

He was in a culture. So he inherited it at in the same way that, you know, you and I are inheriting tons of cultural things that we probably can't even see that are assumptions based in what we do. So from that perspective, I think that I agree with you, the idea that life is pain. I don't agree with, I think that there is pain in life is, is the more, and then, you know, and then the, the distinction that I find so helpful is the idea of the is is the more and then you know and then the the distinction that i find so helpful is the idea of the suffering is the suffering as i always think of as the things we layer on top of the pain so i have a headache and instead of going i have a headache humans get headaches that's something you know i'm such an idiot i shouldn't have drank that extra cup of coffee today or you know mean, whatever the various,

I wonder if this headache's a brain tumor. All those stories that I start laying around, those are the suffering that I think Buddhism is saying, hey, you don't have to have those. You have to have the pain. There's pain that's going to come to you in life, but you don't have to make it worse. I mean, ultimately, sometimes I think that's what it boils down to is you just don't have to make it worse. Yeah, I so agree with that. I have tinnitus, so I have a sound in my head 24-7. And in the beginning, I was one of those, the smaller subset of people where it was brutal and it was really destroying a lot for me. And it was my sort of adaptation of a mindfulness practice that really brought me back out of it because it allowed me to understand that the sound that is in my head 24-7 isn't actually doing anything to me. I live in New York City.

I've got sound bombarding me 24-7 and I don't care about it. So let me kind of say, well, it's the story that I'm telling about this sound in my head that's crushing me. It's the alarm it's the way that i'm sort of the overlay the model that i'm building around this thing that's translating that as you know like this is destroying you this is horrible i can't think about anything else you know it's some bigger thing right rather than the fact that this is one of many sounds that i happen to hear all day every day yep you know and when i started to be able to use a little bit of you know mindfulness based cognitive therapy training and also just pure mindfulness practice on daily basis that became a huge unlucky for me and it's

exactly what you're talking about it's like they the stimulus was there and remains there to this day mm-hmm but the the way that I was able to experience it completely changed it from it's there to just, you know, like it's not suffering for me. Right. But it's still there. Like the circumstance is still there, but I don't suffer it. That's right. Would you choose to have it go away?

Of course. But you don't suffer. And I think about this a lot, this idea of, I did a mini episode a long while back about like noticing but not resisting. Like I play with this in the cold a lot. Like I step outside in the cold and immediately my brain starts going, I'm freaking freezing. Especially in Ohio. Immediately, right?

But I notice if I stop that and I just notice what it feels like to be cold and I don't resist it, it's fine. I mean, would I choose to be in a warm house of course but it's that clenching up and resisting it that causes so much trouble and i just can see that in all you know i can i can i see more and more of all the areas in my life that i do that you know that i that i'm capable of doing that of sort of clenching up and resisting versus going yeah this is okay. I mean, it works for physical pain. Now I don't have chronic pain. I'm not trying to say like, oh, if you've got chronic pain, if you just are a little bit more mindful, everything's fine. I'm

not, you know, there's studies that show that mindfulness does help chronic pain. But for me, if I have pain, if I turn away from the story in my head of this hurts so bad, you know, whatever, whatever unconscious just sort of misery sound, you know, my inner you're again, and I just pay attention to the actual stimulus. The stimulus is not as bad as the story that I'm telling myself. And that that tends to be true kind of across the board. It's not easy to do. And I think that's why having a concentrated mindfulness practice is helpful. Because I think it helps me, you know, sitting down to meditate every day helps me to actually then be able to do those things a little bit better out in the rest of the world. Yeah, completely agree. I mean, that's why to this day, you know, it's now years past where I was in the sort of acute phase.

But every single day starts with a sitting practice. Yeah. Because it just sets up the entire rest of the day. And, and it's the things I don't, I'm curious if you experienced it this way also, it's not so much the things that I noticed that are so different. It's the,

over time I'll be like, Oh, I'm not actually responding the way that I probably like, I'm not as agitated as I would have been a few months or a few years ago at really similar circumstances. Like this high stress environment, I'm actually kind of more, there's a sense of equanimity. And I don't really notice it until I kind of just pause for a moment. I'm like, oh, I'm actually reacting. I'm responding differently than I used to respond here.

That's actually kind of cool. And it's making my experience of this moment better. And it's making the more I can string these moments together, it's just making my life better. Yep. I agree. I mean, I think meditation has helped me a lot. It's oversold, I think. I mean, I think we...

Especially mindfulness, right? Yeah. It's like the hottest thing. Yeah. And it's... It's not a cure. Right. It's not, it's for years, I think I was stopped from having a good steady daily meditation practice by the fact that I thought I must not be able to do it right.

Cause I wasn't getting what people described. Like meditation for me is not a, um, blissful experience. I don't, my, my brain rarely, I either, a lot of times I'm either half asleep or I'm thinking too much. But I'm not at peace when I'm meditating. But I think like you, I find that it just over time, back to Viktor Frankl, who you talked about earlier, he's got that saying that, you know, between stimulus and response, there's a space. And in that space lies all our human freedoms. And I think for me, the best description of what meditation does is it increases that space a little bit, allows me just a little bit more time to think,

what do I want to do with this? You know, my brain will start to, you know, the habitual will start. And I, more often I can go, is that what I want to think? Is that really what I think? Is that like, I can just become a little bit more conscious about something's happening and say, do I want it? Want to do that? I think I've gotten good over the years by lots of different practices. I'm not outwardly very reactive to things. I mean, I'm, I'm pretty, I'm pretty calm.

If someone starts yelling at me, I tend to just not, I don't, I don't engage, but internally it's a different, different things are happening. So I think I have got the external value, you know, not reacting down, which is, I think an important skill to learn. If you don't have that one, it's, it's a good place to start, but it's more of the internal now that I'm getting where I just don't even start to, like you said, I'm just not even getting sucked into it in the same way. Or if I start to, I can recognize like, oh, this is happening. And, you know, I think we started the conversation off around awareness and being conscious about what we're doing.

And that's what, ultimately, that's what I want from my meditation practice is to be more aware of what am I doing? What am I thinking? What am I feeling? Why? And is that what I want? Yeah, no, completely agree. I love that. And it feels like a good place to kind of come full circle too. So maybe this is good life project. So if I offer that term out to you to live a good

life, what comes up? I knew I was going to get asked that question since I've listened to a ton of your podcasts. And ultimately the thing I ended up with mostly was, I think that's a really difficult thing to pin down in a definition. I don't know that I can, but I do think it has something to do with consciousness, intention, and awareness. I think that when I am in that state, my life is generally pretty good, because I'm in a place where I am choosing from a higher part of myself, what I want to do, how I want to see the world, how I want to interact with the people in

the world. I am building the life that matters to me, whatever that might mean. I think that changes over time, you know, what's important to me or what. But if I'm living from a place where I'm at least doing that, I'm making a choice. I think that that's the that's a good life to me is knowing that I guess control is a word we all frown at a lot, but where I feel like I'm sort of in control of myself, not in a negative limiting way, but in a positive and life enhancing way I'm not letting my brain do whatever thing it wants to I've kind of, you know, because if I'm aware then I can do like what Brene Brown said

I can choose to be grateful for the small moments but if I'm not even aware I can't even get there so I think that's for me what it means Thank you Hey, thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you found something valuable, entertaining, engaging, or just plain fun, I'd be so appreciative if you take a couple extra seconds and share it. Maybe you want to email it to a friend, maybe you want to share it around social media, or even be awesome if you'd head over to iTunes and just

give us a rating. Every little bit helps get the word out and it helps more people get in touch with the message. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

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